Knorr-Bremse – largest IPO in 2018

80.10 euro – that was the price of the first trade on October 12, 2018, set at 09.25 CET for Knorr-Bremse (WKN: KBX100) on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. This was the second-largest German IPO in 2018, the sixth-largest ever in Germany, the largest-ever IPO of a German family-owned business and third-largest European Industrials IPO of all time.

“We’ve continued our strong run in IPOs in Germany,” said Josef Ritter, Co-Head of Equity Capital Markets (ECM) EMEA. “We have acted as global coordinator on the three biggest IPOs in the country so far in 2018 – Siemens Healthineers, DWS and now Knorr-Bremse, as well as that of Instone Real Estate.”

Knorr-Bremse is the global market leader for braking systems and a leading supplier of other safety-critical rail and commercial vehicle systems. With its two divisions – Rail Vehicle Systems (RVS) and Commercial Vehicle Systems (CVS) – the company has a resilient business model and has a strong financial track record. Since 1989, the company has consistently outgrown its markets, growing revenues by more than 10 percent a year.

The IPO is expected to secure the company’s continued long-term successful growth and is intended to safeguard the strategic and financial flexibility of Knorr-Bremse, based on a corporate governance framework of public stock corporations.